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When you want an image to use for your character portrait, you have two choices:

Spend years mastering the art of sci-fi / fantasy illustration. Perhaps attend art school. Hone your craft until you can fully realize your character on paper just as you imagine them.

Use Google Image Search and swipe something that looks roughly like how you want your character to look.

For whatever reason, most players take the lazy way and opt for #2, despite the fact that there is a 90% chance they are going to look like a brooding androgynous goth / punk elf holding the wrong weapon.

Regarding the illustration issue: I was actually going for route number one with my Forgotten Realms Cleric of Mystra. I had brought in a sheet of paper and my charcoal pencils and had sketched out my character when we decided that we weren’t going to play the campaign again. Whoops?

Open up a paint program and whip up an Order of the Stick style stick figure sketch! It’s not as easy as it initially looks, but it’s a whole lot easier than some might think. Half an hour of doodling and you have something that, while silly, is at least wearing the right color cloak. Plus, when someone says it looks pretty rough, you can honestly tell them that it’s meant to be like that.

i just got a sent a link to this by one of my gaming groups. i’m enjoying it immensely.

in one of my groups, we had a pretty decent stab at #1, but that’s because two of us are professional gaming illustrators. i only got around to sketching my first character… after that i couldn’t be bothered. (it felt like i was letting too much of my work spill into my leisure, y’know?) :)

Re-reading parts of this again for the many-teenth time. I just remembered that the friend who sent me the link in the first place used to have characters with the most absurd names. I remember a Fuzzy Navel and a Curly Brackets, for starters… and yes, the DM allowed the names.

There’s a 4th option that a guy in our group does for his RPGA Living Greyhawk characters. He takes option #2 but puts his own face into the picture; he’s a wizard with photoshop. Although, his oozemaster portrait got creepier & creepier with every level (he started melting & dripping).

Of course Legolas is hot! If you can’t tell already, I’m a chick…and oh my gosh, that Aragorn…WHY did they make him sound GAY?? That is way not cool! (I am a huge Aragorn lover…may I just say that Viggo Mortensen is hot with a capital “HAW”) But hey – this is freaking hilarious! LOL! ROFL! LMAO!!!

instead of charecter portriets i just use the most acurite Lego figures to depict my charecters. it works quite well for my lack of artistic talent. if i tried i could do rough Oots style drawings buts that as good as it could get for me.

I have a passion for drawing, I kind of draw since I can hold a pencil in my hand, that means like 16 years, I’ve been to an art scool (for a while) and stil. my male charas are so damn often mistaken for a girl… but atleast the clothing, and wepons are the right ones :P

Yeah google images. Or you could just take a picture of yourself and learn photoshop. I mean it’s not that hard to cut your face off your lame ass nerdy body and put it onto the body of Arnold Schwarzenegger and put an ax in his hands. Then just blend the neck so your pasty white face looks like it belongs on his over tanned body and BAM! Warrior. Of course you are still gonna need armor right? Well get some glitter and glue it to the page BAM! Mythril chain mail. I am a freaking genius.

You may be a freaking genius… But damn. If you play a character, you think that character wear your face? That is cheap. And what if you play an opposite sex? Or some other race? I would have never used my neandertan face to imagine my elven sorceress… Neither my mates would. Or I would never like my alchemist, if he would have been simply a copy of me… An RPG character should resemble a whole new person, who is only partially you. Born from you, but living apart. Like a child. Not a clone. This is a basic lesson that is so easily forgotten. A shame really.